by Неизвестный
“No, it looks like it was a little more over there.”
Just then one of them raised his voice. “Hey, what in the world is this hole?”
Where they had all gathered there was a hole about a meter in diameter. They peered in, but it was so dark nothing could be seen. However, it gave one the feeling that it was so deep it went clear through to the center of the earth.
There was even one person who said, “I wonder if it’s a fox’s hole.”
“He-y, come on ou-t!” shouted a young man into the hole. There was no echo from the bottom. Next he picked up a pebble and was about to throw it in.
“You might bring down a curse on us. Lay off,” warned an old man, but the younger one energetically threw the pebble in. As before, however, there was no answering response from the bottom. The villagers cut down some trees, tied them with rope, and made a fence which they put around the hole. Then they repaired to the village.
“What do you suppose we ought to do?”
“Shouldn’t we build the shrine up just as it was over the hole?”
A day passed with no agreement. The news traveled fast, and a car from the newspaper company rushed over. In no time a scientist came out, and with an all-knowing expression on his face he went over to the hole. Next, a bunch of gawking curiosity seekers showed up; one could also pick out here and there men of shifty glances who appeared to be concessionaires. Concerned that someone might fall into the hole, a policeman from the local substation kept a careful watch.
One newspaper reporter tied a weight to the end of a long cord and lowered it into the hole. A long way down it went. The cord ran out, however, and he tried to pull it out, but it would not come back up. Two or three people helped out, but when they all pulled too hard, the cord parted at the edge of the hole. Another reporter, a camera in hand, who had been watching all of this, quietly untied a stout rope that had been wound around his waist.
The scientist contacted people at his laboratory and had them bring out a high-powered bull horn, with which he was going to check out the echo from the hole’s bottom. He tried switching through various sounds, but there was no echo. The scientist was puzzled, but he could not very well give up with everyone watching him so intently. He put the bull horn right up to the hole, turned it to its highest volume, and let it sound continuously for a long time. It was a noise that would have carried several dozen kilometers above ground. But the hole just calmly swallowed up the sound.
In his own mind the scientist was at a loss, but with a look of apparent composure he cut off the sound and, in a manner suggesting that the whole thing had a perfectly plausible explanation, said simply, “Fill it in.”
Safer to get rid of something one didn’t understand.
The onlookers, disappointed that this was all that was going to happen, prepared to disperse. Just then one of the concessionaires, having broken through the throng and come forward, made a proposal.
“Let me have that hole. I’ll fill it in for you.”
“We’d be grateful to you for filling it in,” replied the mayor of the village, “but we can’t very well give you the hole. We have to build a shrine there.”
“If it’s a shrine you want, I’ll build you a fine one later. Shall I make it with an attached meeting hall?”
Before the mayor could answer, the people of the village all shouted out.
“Really? Well, in that case, we ought to have it closer to the village.”
“It’s just an old hole. We’ll give it to you!”
So it was settled. And the mayor, of course, had no objection.
The concessionaire was true to his promise. It was small, but close to the village he did build for them a shrine with an attached meeting hall.
About the time the autumn festival was held at the new shrine, the hole-filling company established by the concessionaire hung out its small shingle at a shack near the hole.
The concessionaire had his cohorts mount a loud campaign in the city. “We’ve got a fabulously deep hole! Scientists say it’s at least five thousand meters deep! Perfect for the disposal of such things as waste from nuclear reactors.”
Government authorities granted permission. Nuclear power plants fought for contracts. The people of the village were a bit worried about this, but they consented when it was explained that there would be absolutely no above-ground contamination for several thousand years and that they would share in the profits. Into the bargain, very shortly a magnificent road was built from the city to the village.
Trucks rolled in over the road, transporting lead boxes. Above the hole the lids were opened, and the wastes from nuclear reactors tumbled away into the hole.
From the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Agency boxes of unnecessary classified documents were brought for disposal. Officials who came to supervise the disposal held discussions on golf. The lesser functionaries, as they threw in the papers, chatted about pinball.
The hole showed no signs of filling up. It was awfully deep, thought some, or else it might be very spacious at the bottom. Little by little the hole-filling company expanded its business.
Bodies of animals used in contagious disease experiments at the universities were brought out, and to these were added the unclaimed corpses of vagrants. Better than dumping all of its garbage in the ocean, went the thinking in the city, and plans were made for a long pipe to carry it to the hole.
The hole gave peace of mind to the dwellers of the city. They concentrated solely on producing one thing after another. Everyone disliked thinking about the eventual consequences. People wanted only to work for production companies and sales corporations; they had no interest in becoming junk dealers. But, it was thought, these problems too would gradually be resolved by the hole.
Young girls whose betrothals had been arranged discarded old diaries in the hole. There were also those who were inaugurating new love affairs and threw into the hole old photographs of themselves taken with former sweethearts. The police felt comforted as they used the hole to get rid of accumulations of expertly done counterfeit bills. Criminals breathed easier after throwing material evidence into the hole.
Whatever one wished to discard, the hole accepted it all. The hole cleansed the city of its filth; the sea and sky seemed to have become a bit clearer than before.
Aiming at the heavens, new buildings went on being constructed one after the other.
One day, atop the high steel frame of a new building under construction, a workman was taking a break. Above his head he heard a voice shout:
“He-y, come on ou-t!”
But in the sky to which he lifted his gaze there was nothing at all. A clear blue sky merely spread over all. He thought it must be his imagination. Then, as he resumed his former position, from the direction where the voice had come, a small pebble skimmed by him and fell on past.
The man, however, was gazing in idle reverie at the city’s skyline growing ever more beautiful, and he failed to notice.
KAIKŌ TAKESHI
Although Kaikō Takeshi (1930–1989) began writing stories in the late 1950s, he did not come into his own as a writer until he was sent to Vietnam and other trouble spots by a Tokyo newspaper. He wrote of his Vietnam experience both indirectly, in his oblique and touching novel Darkness in Summer (Natsu no yami, 1972), and quite directly, in his probing reportage of that war in Into a Black Sun (Kagayakeru yami, 1968). His brief story “The Crushed Pellet” (Tama kudakeru, 1978) evokes China during that time and a particular friendship.
THE CRUSHED PELLET (TAMA KUDAKERU)
Translated by Cecilia Segawa Seigle
Late one morning, I awoke in the capital of a certain country and found myself—not changed overnight into a large brown beetle, nor feeling exactly on top of the world—merely ready to go home. For about an hour I remained between the sheets, wriggling, pondering, and scrutinizing my decision from all angles until it became clear that my mind was made up. Then I slipped out of bed. I walked down a boulevard where
the aroma of freshly baked bread drifted from glimmering shop windows, and went into the first airline office I encountered to make a reservation flight to Tokyo via the southern route. Since I wanted to spend a day or two in Hong Kong, it had to be the southern route. Once I had reserved a seat and pushed through the glass door to the street, I felt as though a period had been written at the end of a long, convoluted paragraph. It was time for a new paragraph to begin and a story to unroll, but I had no idea where it would lead. I felt no exhilaration in thoughts of the future. When I left Japan, there had been fresh, if anxious, expectations moving vividly through the vague unknown. But going home was no more than bringing a sentence to a close, and opening a paragraph. I had no idea what lay ahead, but it aroused no apprehension or sense of promise. Until a few years ago, I had felt excitement—fading rapidly, perhaps, but there nonetheless—about changing paragraphs. But as I grew older, I found myself feeling less and less of anything. Where once there had been a deep pool of water, mysterious and cool, I now saw a bone-dry riverbed.
I returned to the hotel and began to pack, feeling the familiar fungus starting to form on my back and shoulders. I took the elevator to the lobby, settled my account, and deposited my body and suitcase on the shuttle bus to the airport. I tried to be as active as I could, but the fungus had already begun to spread. On my shoulders, chest, belly, and legs the invisible mold proliferated, consuming me inwardly but leaving my outer form untouched. The closer I came to Tokyo, the faster it would grow, and dreary apathy would gradually take hold.
Imprisoned in the giant aluminum cylinder, speeding through a sea of cotton clouds, I thought over the past several months spent drifting here and there. I already felt nostalgia for those months, as though they had occurred a decade ago instead of ending only yesterday. Reluctantly, I was heading home to a place whose familiarity I had hated, and therefore fled. I went home crestfallen, like a soldier whose army has surrendered before fighting any battle. Each repetition of this same old process was merely adding yet another link to a chain of follies. Unnerved by this thought, I remained rigid, strapped to my narrow seat. I would probably forget these feelings briefly in the hubbub of customs at Haneda Airport. But the moment I opened the glass door to the outside world, that swarming fungus would surround me. Within a month or two, I would turn into a snowman covered with a fuzzy blue-gray mold. I knew this would happen, yet I had no choice but to go home, for I had found no cure elsewhere. I was being catapulted back to my starting point because I had failed to escape.
I entered a small hotel on the Kowloon Peninsula and turned the pages of my tattered memo book to find the telephone number of Chang Lijen. I always gave him a call when I was there; if he was out, I would leave my name and the name of the hotel, since my Chinese was barely good enough to order food at restaurants. Then I would telephone again at nine or ten in the morning, and Chang’s lively, fluent Japanese would burst into my ear. We would decide to meet in a few hours at the corner of Nathan Road, or at the pier of the Star Ferry, or sometimes at the entrance to the monstrous Tiger Balm Garden. Chang was a prematurely wizened man in his fifties, who always walked with his head down; when he approached a friend, he would suddenly lift his head and break into a big, toothy smile, his eyes and mouth gaping all at once. When he laughed, his mouth seemed to crack up to his ears. I found it somehow warm and reassuring each time I saw those large stained teeth, and felt the intervening years drop away. As soon as he smiled and began to chatter about everything, the fungus seemed to retreat a little. But it would never disappear, and the moment I was the least bit off guard, it would revive and batten on me. While I talked with Chang, though, it was usually subdued, waiting like a dog. I would walk shoulder to shoulder with him, telling him about the fighting in Africa, the Near East, Southeast Asia, or whatever I had just seen. Chang almost bounded along, listening to my words, clicking his tongue and exclaiming. And when my story was over, he would tell me about the conditions in China, citing the editorials of the left- and right-wing papers and often quoting Lu Hsun.
I had met Chang some years back through a Japanese newspaperman. The journalist had gone home soon afterward, but I had made a point of seeing Chang every time I had an occasion to visit Hong Kong. I knew his telephone number but had never been invited to his home, and I knew scarcely anything about his job or his past. Since he had graduated from a Japanese university, his Japanese was flawless, and I was aware that he had an extraordinary knowledge of Japanese literature; and yet, beyond the fact that he worked in a small trading company and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers to earn some pocket money, I knew nothing about his life.
He would lead me through the hustle of Nathan Road, commenting, if he spotted a sign on a Swiss watch shop saying “King of Ocean Mark,” that it meant an Omega Seamaster; or stopping at a small bookstore to pick up a pamphlet with crude illustrations of tangled bodies and show me the caption, “Putting oneself straight forward,” explaining that it meant the missionary position. He also taught me that the Chinese called hotels “wine shops” and restaurants “wine houses,” though no one knew the reason why.
For the last several years, one particular question had come up whenever we saw each other, but we had never found an answer to it. In Tokyo one would have laughed it off as nonsense, but here it was a serious issue. If you were forced to choose between black and white, right and left, all and nothing—to choose a side or risk being killed—what would you do? If you didn’t want to choose either side, but silence meant death, what would you do? How would you escape? There are two chairs and you can sit in either one, but you can’t remain standing between them. You know, moreover, that though you’re free to make your choice, you are expected to sit in one particular chair; make the wrong choice, and the result is certain: “Kill!” they’ll shout—“Attack!” “Exterminate!” In the circumstances, what kind of answer can you give to avoid sitting in either chair, and yet satisfy their leader, at least for the time being? Does history provide a precedent? China’s beleaguered history, its several thousand years of troubled rise and fall, must surely have fostered and crystallized some sort of wisdom on the subject. Wasn’t there some example, some ingenious answer there?
I was the one who had originally brought up this question. We were in a small dim sum restaurant on a back street. I had asked it quite casually, posing a riddle as it were, but Chang’s shoulders fidgeted and his eyes turned away in confusion. He pushed the dim sum dishes aside and, pulling out a cigarette, stroked it several times with fingers thin as chicken bones. He lit it carefully and inhaled deeply and slowly; he then blew out the smoke and murmured:
“ ‘Neither a horse nor a tiger’—it’s the same old story. In old China, there was a phrase, ‘Ma-ma, hu-hu,’ that meant a noncommittal ‘neither one thing nor the other.’ The characters were horse-horse, tiger-tiger. It’s a clever expression, and the attitude was called Ma-huism. But they’d probably kill you if you gave an answer like that today. It sounds vague, but actually you’re making the ambiguity of your feelings known. It wouldn’t work. They’d kill you on the spot. So, how to answer . . . you’ve raised a difficult question, haven’t you?”
I asked him to think it over until I saw him next time. Chang had become pensive, motionless, as though shocked into deep thought. He left his dumplings untouched, and when I called this to his attention, he smiled crookedly and scratched something on a piece of paper. He handed it to me and said, “You should remember this when you’re eating with a friend.” He had written “Mo t’an kuo shih,” which means roughly “Don’t discuss politics.” I apologized profusely for my thoughtlessness.
Since then, I have stopped in Hong Kong and seen Chang at intervals of one year, sometimes two. After going for a walk or having a meal (I made sure we had finished eating) I always asked him the same question. He would cock his head thoughtfully or smile ruefully and ask me to wait a little longer. On my part, I could only pose the question, because I had no wisdom to im
part; so the riddle stayed unsolved for many years, its cruel face still turned toward us. In point of fact, if there were a clever way of solving the riddle, everyone would have used it—and a new situation requiring a new answer would have arisen, perpetuating the dilemma. A shrewd answer would lose its sting in no time, and the question would remain unanswered. On occasion, however—for instance when Chang told me about Laoshe—I came very close to discerning an answer.
Many years ago, Laoshe visited Japan as leader of a literary group and stopped in Hong Kong on his way back to China. Chang had been given an assignment to interview him for a newspaper and went to the hotel where Laoshe was staying. Laoshe kept his appointment but said nothing that could be turned into an article, and when Chang kept asking how the intellectuals had fared in post-revolutionary China, the question was always evaded. When this had happened several times, Chang began to think that Laoshe’s power as a writer had probably waned. Then Laoshe began talking about country cooking, and continued for three solid hours. Eloquently and colorfully he described an old restaurant somewhere in Szechwan, probably Chungking or Chengtu, where a gigantic cauldron had simmered for several centuries over a fire that had never gone out. Scallions, Chinese lettuce, potatoes, heads of cows, pigs’ feet—just about anything and everything was thrown into the pot. Customers sat around the cauldron and ladled the stew into soup bowls; and the charge was determined by adding up the number of empty bowls each person had beside him. This was the sole subject that Laoshe discussed for three hours, in minute and vivid detail—what was cooked, how the froth rose in the pot, what the stew tasted like, how many bowls one could eat. When he finished talking he disappeared.
“He left so suddenly there was no way to stop him,” said Chang. “He was magnificent. . . . Among Laoshe’s works, I prefer Rickshaw Boy to Four Generations Under One Roof. When Laoshe spoke, I felt as though I had just reread Rickshaw Boy after many years. His poignant satire, the humor and sharp observation in that book—that’s what I recognized in him. I felt tremendously happy and moved when I left the hotel. When I got home, I was afraid I might forget the experience if I slept, so I had a stiff drink and went over the story, savoring every word.”